Dewsbury and Batley to get £500,000 investment in burial space
The motion was proposed by councillor Yusra Hussain and seconded by councillor Masood Ahmed, with the backing of councillor Cathy Scott, councillor Paul Moore, councillor Habiban Zaman and councillor Adam Zaman, the Local Democracy Service reports.The group said: "This is a crucial victory for our communities. "The Community Alliance will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that the needs of Dewsbury and Batley residents are met, and that burial space allocation remains a fair and transparent process."The group also urged the council to enhance transparency regarding burial site provision, particularly by exploring ways to involve the wider community in discussions beyond the current Bereavement Forum meetings. It comes after the Law Commission proposed that graves be reused up and down the country amid a national shortage, prompting opponents in Dewsbury to launch a petition.Before any changes can be brought in, a report will be drawn up by the Law Commission and recommendations made to the government.Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
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The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on singling out the ethnicity of suspects: fuelling the fire, not dousing the flames
The speed and scale at which disinformation spreads is one of the central challenges of our age. But if facts alone were sufficient to dispel rumours, conspiracy theories and lies then the far right in Britain would be out of business. Instead, it is flourishing, and moving into the political mainstream. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has welcomed new police guidelines encouraging forces to release the ethnicity and migration status of those charged in high-profile cases. She had already indicated that she believed the guidance needed to change and urged the Law Commission to accelerate its review around what information can be released ahead of trials. The idea is that the shift will help to prevent a repeat of the riots that swept parts of England a year ago after lies spread that the murderer of three schoolgirls in Southport was a Muslim asylum seeker. Police rebutted the claims relatively quickly, albeit not as fast as some hoped. The truth did not stop the unrest. No one doubts that there is a problem; the question is whether this is the right solution. As Southport and other cases show, the police already had the power to release information to dispel lies. Police will increasingly be badgered for the information if they do not share it, and Diana Johnson, the policing minister, has said that the government will want the details released in 'most cases': the hope is that the guidance turns an exceptional decision into a routine one. The need for transparency, especially important in an era when faith in authority is battered for reasons good and bad, must be weighed against investigative needs and the demands of a fair trial. The bare-bones information initially revealed of a suspect's identity is supplemented over the criminal process. The police, never the most transparent institution, have often tilted too far towards caution on sharing information after the Leveson inquiry into the press. But – even putting aside the question of whether the police are ideally placed to handle sensitive matters of ethnicity given their own record – one would have to be remarkably naive to see those now demanding more information on the origins of suspects as champions of the truth. They are not seeking enlightenment: they want confirmation of their prejudices and assistance in spreading them. Singling out one particular aspect of a suspect's identity does not merely give credence to but cements the belief that race or migration status are central to criminality – when, as the grandfather of one Southport victim, Bebe King, observed: 'Mental health issues, and the propensity to commit crime, happens in any ethnicity, nationality or race.' Poor educational attainment is correlated with criminal convictions. But no one is demanding the release of suspects' school records. The Leveson report also pointed to the evidence of 'discriminatory, sensational or unbalanced reporting in relation to ethnic minorities, immigrants and/or asylum seekers'. Rightwing media, and far-right agitators, will emblazon offences ascribed to asylum seekers or members of the South Asian diaspora across websites and social media platforms, while ignoring the ethnicity of the perpetrator when white Britons are responsible. The government either wants to close down a line of political attack, or more generously, douse the fires set by those promoting division and hatred. But disclosing ethnicity is more likely to fuel them by legitimising and further embedding the far right's poisonous worldview.
The Guardian
10-08-2025
- The Guardian
Campaigners criticise UK plans to reveal suspects' ethnicity and migration status
Anti-racism campaigners have criticised proposals to allow police to reveal the ethnicity and migration status of suspects, after a row triggered by claims police 'covered up' the backgrounds of two men charged in connection to the alleged rape of a child. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, this week told the BBC she hoped the Law Commission would 'accelerate' a review of contempt of court and that 'guidance needs to change' about information released when a trial is pending. But the anti-racism group the Runnymede Trust – which this month claimed 'hostile language' from politicians and the media towards immigration was fuelling 'reactionary politics' – says the proposals risk framing violence against women and girls as an issue of ethnicity instead of misogyny. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) said the proposals would 'undermine' justice. The debate was reignited after George Finch, the Reform UK leader of Warwickshire county council, accused police of a 'cover-up' over the migration status of two suspects charged after the alleged rape of the child, claiming they were asylum seekers. The force strongly denies a cover-up, saying it merely acted in line with national guidance. The details of suspects before trials are routinely limited to ensure the fairness and legal safety of proceedings. But Downing Street has called for 'transparency' to rebuild public trust after false rumours spread after 2024's Southport murders. However, campaigners warn that politicians and media are emboldening the far right by linking migration to crime. This month, the Runnymede Trust released a report that – after analysing more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019 and July 2024 – found the word most strongly associated with migrants was 'illegal'. After Cooper's remarks that 'more information should be provided … including on some of those asylum issues', Dr Shabna Begum, the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said: 'These proposals do nothing to address the urgent issues of male sexual violence, divert attention away from women and girls and fixate on nationality and asylum status – as part of an increasingly aggressive far-right agenda. 'Instead of recycling age-old tropes about men of colour as inherently threatening to white British women, we should be centring victims and survivors of all backgrounds. 'We all deserve better than this pantomime politics that offers us easy villains but deals with none of the wider conditions where misogyny has increased.' Runnymede's recent report said there were 'many' examples of media 'stories about distressing crimes that emphasise the immigration status of the perpetrator', claiming they were used to frame asylum seekers as a potential threat to women and 'the British way of life'. The report also cited comments made by the former home secretary Suella Braverman, in the context of 2023's illegal migration bill, which linked people arriving on boats to 'heightened levels of criminality' and Robert Jenrick's X post this year that spoke of 'importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women'. Runnymede's report said the 'long-term effects' of such claims would be to 'normalise' violence against women and girls by making it seem as if it is 'determined by ethnicity rather than the perpetuation of misogynist practices in society'. Cooper described the release of information about suspects as 'an operational decision for the police and Crown Prosecution Service on an individual case' to the BBC, stressing ministers had to take care to avoid legal prejudice. But Griff Ferris, the interim director of communications at JCWI, said prior release of ethnicity and migration status would 'undermine what's left of justice in this country' and make all communities 'less safe'. He added: 'This deeply irresponsible and dangerous proposal is guaranteed to fuel racist narratives and further embolden the far right. 'Policies like this send a chilling message: that some people are inherently more 'suspect'.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'The home secretary has made clear that there is a strong public interest in maximum transparency wherever that is possible. 'That is why the Home Office and College of Policing are working together to strengthen and clarify the guidance around how and when information is released.' Ahmad Mulakhil has been charged with rape and Mohammad Kabir has been charged with kidnap and strangulation after an alleged attack on a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton in July.
Telegraph
05-08-2025
- Telegraph
The British state must trust its people
It is curious to see how the ability of Britain's executive to govern the country waxes and wanes. When it comes to releasing prisoners early to avoid overcrowding, the Government finds the levers of power at its fingertips. When the discussion is around the disclosure of the nationality and immigration status of suspects, however, the best that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper can apparently offer is to ask 'the Law Commission to accelerate its review'. A cynic might think that this non-committal approach indicates a Government more comfortable with maintaining a tight grip on the flow of information in controversial cases, rather than in trusting the public to behave responsibly when given access to the truth. As the Southport riots among other events demonstrated, however, the maintenance of an official information vacuum creates room for rumours and misinformation to spread, sometimes with tragic consequences. And as we have seen, also, with the attempts to cover up the grooming gangs scandal, and the mass airlift of Afghans into Britain, that the long-term effect of this approach is to utterly destroy trust in the state institutions engaging in these efforts. This is all the more so given the apparent willingness of agencies to release information when it can assist in shaping a narrative. When a car crashed into crowds in Liverpool earlier this year, Merseyside Police decided to disclose that the arrested man was a white British national. Indeed, this same willingness means that non-disclosure of available information is now taken by some as an indication of a non-white British background. It is understandable that Britain's politicians are ill at ease with the country that they have helped to create, and its attendant social strains and tensions. It is true, also, that a lack of trust in the public has marked both Labour and Conservative governments; while the Tories are now demanding an official investigation into the Whitehall 'spy' unit monitoring social media sentiment over migrant hotels, it should be remembered that this same unit was established under a Conservative government, and deployed to monitor critics of its lockdown policies. Ultimately, however, the principles of democratic government demand that citizens are kept informed and that the state acts with their consent, rather than attempting to reshape public opinion to its liking.
